Mike Borras

It’s time again for music lovers around the World to unite and share their love of the independent record store. That’s right, Saturday, April 16th, is international Record Store Day! Record Store Day is a grassroots initiative to showcase and raise awareness of the independent record store or sadly, what’s left of them. For many music lovers, the local record store is a mecca of rare, hard-to-find vinyl, used CDs and discussions about obscure bands with limited edition releases. Record Store Day celebrates that, through huge sales, live concerts, celebrity DJs and killer parties around the World, all focused on one thing. Music!

So, in honor of Record Store Day 2011 we’re putting together a small list of our favorite record stores around the World who are participating in this year’s Record Store Day with excellent sales (up to 50% off), live shows from some of the best in independent music and of course, plenty of vinyl goodness for your ears and hearts. Do you have a favorite independent record store? Let us know in the comments!

5. Pet Sounds StockholmSkånegatan 53, Stockholm, Sweden 116 37 One of Stockholm’s best indie stores, you can grab everything from indie rock to electronica to ambient at great prices, in a cool atmosphere. And after you’ve finished sifting through the bins, you can head over to the Pet Sounds Bar & Restaurant!

4. Kompakt Records CologneWerderstraße 15, Cologne, Germany 50672The legendary Kompakt Records in Cologne, Germany features some of the most obscure in minimal techno, electronica and ambient music in continental Europe. Fans of minimal beats and blips have to visit KOMPAKT at least once in their lives!

3. Other Music NYC15 East 14th Street, NYC, NY 10003 An absolute legend in the NYC music scene. Other Music is one of the tiniest record stores ever, but with one of the biggest hearts around. Find anything from minimal Brazilian techno, to the latest from Sonic Youth. Also, chances are you’ll even bump into Thurston Moore from time to time!

2. Rave Up Records ViennaHofmühlgasse 1, Vienna, Austria 1060One of the more obscure record stores in Europe, but certainly one of the best. Over a decade of supplying Vienna music fans with obscure independent music, from indie rock to ambient to underground hip-hop, the Rave Up team love their music and you can feel the love the minute you walk in.

1. Amoeba Music Los Angeles6400 W. Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, Ca 90028 What more can be said about Amoeba? They’ve set the bar for what to expect from a record store. Over 100,000 items in a huge warehouse-like environment, from obscure vinyl to used CDs to hard to find cassettes, it’s all at Amoeba, seriously. Chances are pretty good you’ll bump into Henry Rollins or Jason Schwartzmann, so be on your best behavior!

It’s that time again! We’re looking for a few great people to join our team. We have a number of open positions for Rails Developers, Community Management, Marketing/PR and Partner-Account Management that we’d like to fill, which are all full-time and based in our Vienna, Austria office. We’re looking around the World for good people to join in the fun, so if even if you’re not in/near Vienna, we’d be open to discussing relocation assistance for the right person, so let’s talk.

We’re super happy to announce an update to the Tupalo.com Android application, bringing us up to version 1.3.1! Lots of behind the scenes work has gone into this update, with some look and feel improvements in addition to improvements to the stability and performance of the application (and a slightly smaller app size!)

In addition, we’ve rolled out the first version of our Augmented Reality (AR) view, named scanAR (supported by impulse). When performing a nearby search, use the menu option to bring up the options list. Within the options list you’ll see the button for scanAR. Select it and consider yourself augmented!

You can get the Tupalo.com Android application several ways:

On your Android device, open up the Market app and simply search for “Tupalo.com”

The startup scene in Austria is booming and local search in general is kicking off throughout Europe, with Google and Facebook also getting deeper in the game! Overall, it’s a great trend and we’re more than happy to see as many services as possible trying to increase the awareness of social media to local business owners!

Catch up with me, Mike Borras, at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo happening Monday, September 27 through Thursday, September the 30th in New York City at the Sheraton New York Hotel. Speakers include: Ryan Sarver (Twitter), Ben Lerer (Thrillist), Bre Pettis, Dennis Crowley (Foursquare), Fred Wilson and more.

Web 2.0 Expo New York highlights the important debates and the challenges faced by the industry’s key players, and helps you pick the winning platforms for growth in a web-fueled world. Connect with other designers, developers, entrepreneurs, marketers, business strategists, and investors at one of the most vibrant events of the year.

It’s that time of the year again, as BIA/Kelsey holds one the most exciting conferences of the year centered around the Yellow Pages and local search industry. Directional Media Strategies 2010 is almost here and this time it’s taking place in the lovely city of Dallas, Texas. Tupalo.com will be on-hand for the excitement and in addition to meeting many of the most exciting players in the Yellow Pages industry, will also be blogging & Tweeting about the presentations and keynotes!

More about the DMS2010 from BIA/Kelsey:

Directional Media Strategies 2010 takes place in a pivotal moment in Yellow Pages history. BIA/Kelsey’s latest global Yellow Pages forecast indicates digital will account for 39 percent of Yellow Pages revenues by 2014. We see 2010 as the year Yellow Pages shifts from a print-centric to a digital-centric industry. The future revolves around how publishers can best serve the needs of small business advertisers—with video, reputation management, mobile directories, group buying, SEM/SEO and more.

You might have heard of Foursquare or Gowalla, but wouldn’t it be really fun if we had those Check-ins within the entire Tupalo platform? On the web and on the iPhone app? Well, the time has come and as of today you can check-in to your favorite local businesses on Tupalo.com.

Get the latest iPhone App from the App store and start off by checking in to your favorite locations. If this seems awkward to some of you, then simply remember that the concept of “check-in” is nothing new. We are sure most of you have already checked in at Airports or Hotels. Having the option to check-in at your favorite bar or your dentist is simply the next step in social interaction in the real world. This is truly a convergence of reality and virtuality and it’s all in the palm of your hand, whether you’re at your favorite bakery in Houston, Texas or Japanese Restaurant in New York City.

In addition to check-ins, you can also follow interesting people around your city and around the World to find the interesting businesses and cities they visit with Tupalo.com in their hand. In addition, become the Kaiser of your favorite businesses, showing your friends and followers around the World you’re finger is on the pulse of the best local businesses in your neighborhood.

In addition, look forward to our rolling out local deals around Europe and the US, rewarding check-ins with local deals, coupons and freebies for checking in to participating local businesses.

The most popular businesses on Tupalo now have small QR codes available for you to scan with your smartphones QR code reader! When scanned, your phone will automagically have the contact information, map links and ability to save the businesses contact information to your address book.

Give it a try yourself over at the listing for Naschmarkt Deli in Vienna, Austria. Next to the address is a small QR code link, hover your mouse over it and give it a go (or just scan this one below)

Pretty cool huh? We think so! For Android users we can recommend the Barcode Scanner App, for the iPhone give the NeoReader app a try and if you’re a Symbian, Windows Mobile or JAVA phone user, we wholeheartedly recommend Kaywa.

For business owners, you can of course copy these QR codes for your menus, advertisements or even to repost on your own website! But expect some more QR Code fun in the coming months from Tupalo!

Over the past few months, we’ve been busily updating and improving Tupalo by doing a complete site refresh, including adding and removing many features. We’ve done everything from slashing entire areas of the site, to a massive new update to our user interface and also the ways people interact and connect on Tupalo!

We’re still rolling out additions, large and small, everyday and have quite a few exciting announcements and new features coming over the next few weeks, but for now enjoy the over 1000 improvements we’ve rolled out on Tupalo this weekend!

Here are just a few:

Completely new user interface throughout the whole site, enjoy the white space and cleaner experience

Friends are so 2004 man, now follow/unfollow whoever you find interesting, without all the extra baggage declaring a mutual friendship brings with it

Big, beautiful Flickr photos of businesses! Take a look at photos of Bok Sushi Bar in Vienna as an example. Photos are still pulled via Flickr machine tags, but we’re working on some great new features so you can add photos to your favorite restaurants!

Your user profile is more relevant to you! See status updates from your followed list and see what others are enjoying in their neighborhood

We’re more than excited to announce a new round of funding today together with HEROLD.at, the publishers of Austria’s Yellow Pages and European Directories, the Pan-European directory publisher, with holdings in Finland, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands and 6 other European markets.

Together with HEROLD and the European Directories portfolio of publishers, Tupalo.com has become one of the largest Austrian-based online services, reaching nearly 2 million users on a monthly basis throughout our core markets, Austria, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Poland.

And we’re continuing to grow! We’re currently relocating our offices in Vienna, Austria and also growing our team. In addition, this announcement Today sets the stage for Tupalo.com to begin offering premium advertising to Austria’s 300,000+ businesses, utilizing HEROLD.at’s salesforce (of roughly 250 staff), expanding throughout Europe and the World, and rolling out new features on Tupalo.com, including our long-awaited mobile applications!